Taking Off the Training Wheels. There Is Presence in Absence.

Lookee here: Acts 1:1-11

Like Rachel Held Evans, the Ascension has me struggling with feelings of abandonment. She says to Jesus, “I can’t help but think that if you’d stayed a little longer, we might have avoided the Crusades.  Or the Great Schism. Or that time we used the Bible to justify slavery and invoked “Manifest Destiny” to slaughter women and children.  We’ve made a mess of things, Jesus, often in your name. We could use a little micromanaging.” 

Why does Jesus leave us? One day, he’s just poof, gone. He’s not kidnapped or killed, not arrested or taken. He’s just gone. Sucked up into the clouds somewhere, seemingly out of his own volition. 

Like a child who doesn’t understand her parents’ divorce, her dad leaving, her mom crying in the chair he’d left behind, I’m left asking all the same questions: Why does he leave us? And where does he go? And why can’t he stay?  

The Ascension is a tough one for me. It’s a story of God leaving. Of God letting go. Of separation and division and distance. Every bone in my body wants to resist. Wants to reject this story. God should always be with us, in the fleshy, incarnational, real life, living body of Jesus. 

Isn’t that the amazing thing about the incarnation - the Emmanuel, God-With-Us, coming to us to show us that God isn’t to be found in the far off, in the ethereal, in the out there somewhere, or trapped in a box and paraded around the countryside, but in the here and now, in the real, in the every day? In everything? 

We get the horrors of the crucifixion and then the wonders of the resurrection and then forty or so short days. A little over a month. That’s it. We get forty days of Jesus appearing from nowhere, walking through walls, revealing his scars, showing up on the beach, looking like a gardener or a stranger until he says our names or shares a little bit of fish and bread with his friends. 

Forty short days of these strange, quick appearances, until, suddenly, he says, “It’s time to go.” And then he leaves. Poof. Gone. Sucked up into the heavens.

Where is the good news…when God leaves?

I want the resurrected Christ to sit still and settle down. I want him to build a nice house in the Jerusalem suburbs, marry a pretty girl, have a few kids and a golden retriever, keep teaching us on Sundays, keep healing us when we ask. I want Jesus to keep pointing us to God in clear and physical ways, I want him to spell it out for us, I want neon lights and sky writing and simple texts messages that say “go. Feed them. Hug them. Hold them. Over there is the kingdom of God.” 

Of course. That was never the Jesus we got. Like the Spirit who will enter our lives with wind and fire, Jesus was always wild, always a little off center, always a little hard to understand. Jesus was always with us, but even when he was here, we never really understood all that was going on. We never grasped the fullness of who he was or what he was doing here on earth, in a body, telling strange stories about weeds and seeds and lost coins. But at least he was here. We could reach out and touch him, grasp his hem, feel his touch, know that he was still here. 

But he leaves. He disappears. He goes away. 

He promises a Spirit that will come. He commands us to be his witnesses. And then up he goes, the disciples watching the bottoms of his feet as he ascends, to…where? Where does he go? 

How much horror and sorrow could have been avoided if he’d just stayed? Stayed even just a little bit longer? But instead, he puts us in charge and we screw it all up. Like Rachel Held Evans says, “We’ve made a mess of things, Jesus, often in your name. We could use little micromanaging.”

But Jesus promises to be with us “until the end of the age.” He says that where two or more are gathered, there he is in the midst of us. How can this be true if Jesus leaves? Does he lie? Renege on his promises? Or is something else going on? Could both things be true? Could Jesus be gone and still…be here?

Is it possible to be both present and absent at the same time? 

I mean, the converse feels true. It’s certainly possible to have absence in presence, to be surrounded by people and still feel alone, to have everything you need and still feel as if something is missing. So maybe it’s also possible to be completely alone, and yet, not really be alone. Maybe it’s possible that there is such thing as presence in the midst of absence. 

I’ve been wondering all week, and probably for longer than that, if there can be presence in absence? Is there such thing as really, truly being all alone? When the thing itself is gone, is it really gone? Or like art, is something maintained, something saved, even when the object and inspiration for our painting or drawing or music or story is gone? 

In drawing class, we’d study and draw the lines and shapes, the colors and shadows of a bowl of fruit. We’d do our best to savor the form and beauty of that bowl of fruit, we’d copy their images on to canvas or paper, and then the days would pass and the fruit would eventually change form, would rot and then disappear, to be finally thrown in the trash or the compost and return to the earth. 

But something of that bowl of fruit was saved in our drawings. Some part, some essence, some piece of that bowl of fruit was saved, preserved in our images, preserved in our inaccurate sketches, preserved in our seeing and our studying, preserved in our memories. Some part of that fruit was still present, even when the actual fruit was gone. 

I know I’m not being very clear here. I’m entering in to a dangerous liminal space where things aren’t all that coherent, where heresies are possible, but where deep truths can be revealed if not quite articulated. I’m probably being a little too mystical, too philosophical. 

But my hunch is, that with God, somehow, it is possible to have presence in absence, it’s possible to be completely separated from a thing, and yet, there’s still a small thread of connection, a small hint of presence, there is being even in unbeing. There is presence even in absence. There is form even in emptiness. The sun still burns, even while there’s night. Maybe there’s still Jesus even after Jesus is gone. Maybe, when Jesus was ascending, going wherever the heck he was going, he left a line of light, a thin string of presence behind him, that leads us to him, that helps us remember him, that offers us his presence even when he’s not physically here. 

The best way I have right now to think of this is when my dad was helping me learn to ride a bike. I’d been using training wheels for awhile, but then the day came when it was time. It was time to take them off. So we went to the empty parking lot across the street from my house, and I hopped on, started to pedal, and my dad kept his hand on the back of my seat, correcting my balance whenever I wavered. He ran along beside me, encouraging me, holding on to me, balancing me, until he just didn’t anymore. He let go. I didn’t even realize it at first. I just kept pedaling, feeling the wind in my hair, the exhilaration of speed. Dad was gone, watching me from afar, cheering me on, and it wasn’t until I started to wobble that I realized that Dad wasn’t holding on to me anymore. 

Dad was gone, way on the other side of the parking lot, and I was on my own, balancing by myself. My dad let go, and I raced forward. And a whole new world of streets and paths, neighborhoods and adventures opened up to me right at that moment when my dad let go. New possibilities and new dangers and new discoveries appeared as soon as my dad let me go. My dad didn’t abandon me; rather, he opened up a new world to me. 

What if the Ascension is about Jesus taking off the training wheels for us? What if the Ascension is about opening up a new world to us, whether we’re ready for it or not?

Maybe the Ascension is a gift of absence. Maybe the Ascension is a gift of emptiness. Maybe God leaving is different from God abandoning. Maybe God holds us steady, runs alongside us, encourages us, and then, in some sense, lets us go, lets us propel ourselves forward in fear and hope and exhilaration? But like my dad, watching, waiting, ready to pick me up when I hit that curb and crash my bike, God is still with us, that line of light still connecting us to things we cannot see or hear or touch or directly know? 

I don’t know. I’m probably not making any sense at all. But like the Ascension, I feel this truth, this thing I’m holding on to that I can’t quite grasp, I can’t quite put in to words, I can’t quite see or know or feel, but is real just the same. 

Dan’s grandpa was the sweetest man you’d ever met. His name was Stew, and he was quiet, thoughtful, funny, and so easy going. One day, he and his wife, Dan’s grandma, Punky, went with us to look for some stones in the Arizona desert. He was unsteady on his feet, and he fell into a barrel cactus. He had cactus quills and pins and spikes all over his face, in his hands, through his torn pants. When we got home, he took sips of martini as Dan plucked out each glochid, one by one. He’d smile, ask for a break, and then take another sip. Then he got Alzheimers and, eventually, died. Punky and Stew had been married for over sixty years, and I’m sure they had their challenges. But their greatest struggle might have been when Stew started to disappear from her, he lost his memories, he lost his thoughts, his abilities and eventually, his presence. She stayed in their apartment while he moved in to an assisted living building, away from her. She visited for lunch every day. And every day, she watched as pieces of him disappeared. 

But at his funeral, she said something that I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand until and unless I go through it myself. She said that, in a way, Stew’s death had brought him back to her. In his death, he stopped disappearing, and started being present to her again. Stew had become present his his absence. That line of light and love and devotion did not sever, but grew stronger, even after his death. 

And I wonder if a little bit of Grandpa Stew is present every time I think about that day in the Arizona desert. I wonder if my dad is with me every time I go for a bike ride with my kids.

I don’t know. But what if the Ascension is a little bit like that? Jesus leaves, but he doesn’t really leave. Jesus disappears into the clouds, but he’s not really gone. Jesus is absent, but becomes present to us in a new way. God takes off the training wheels and lets us go, but is still with us in new and fearful and exhilarating and exhausting and overwhelming ways.

We are called to be Jesus’s witnesses. We are called, not to watch the bottoms of his feet as they ascend into the clouds, not to stare witlessly into the sky, but to look down and out, forward and far, into the new world where Jesus reveals himself in new, confusing, but real and present ways. Maybe there is presence in the absence. 

There is Jesus in the world, even after he has ascended into the heavens, and we are called, like artists, to see him and name him and reflect him as best we can. And like all art, like memory, like riding a bike, there will be a piece of his presence still remaining, long after he has sat down on the right hand of God the Father almighty. Jesus is still with us, the line of light and love still connects us, in every created thing, God’s artwork, even when it’s hard to see. 

Thanks be to God.